6 Things Your Life Would Be Miserable Without
I think, most of us would like to be more efficient and generally achieve more in our lives, but preferably without having to work hard on that. The perfect variant would be to wake up in the morning, and voila—you know a new language, you can play guitar, you know how to code. Well, I do not promise you miracles, but I do know how to get this kind of things without honing your skills non-stop. The secret is simple.
Last year, I managed to learn a new language, read the books I always left for later, sort my numerous photos (the whole bundle was stored in one folder on my laptop for years), and I started to do exercises regularly (which helped me to lose 17 lbs). As I am writing this article, I myself feel amazed by how much I managed to do. But in fact, it was not strenuous, I did not have to push myself and exceed my limits. All these achievements became possible because of the small habits I developed during the year. The general idea is to do little, yet do it every day, over an extended period of time.
So as I know it from my own experience, I may say, that if you do not have a deadline, it is better to work smarter, not harder. And here is what I mean.
1. Do not be too strict with yourself
If you are thinking about bringing some changes to your life, it may be tempting to decide to “start a brand new life from Monday.” In your imagination, everything is simple: when a new week comes, you immediately start doing exercises in the morning (30 min), you learn one lesson of (whatever you need) every evening (45-60 min) and at night, lying in your cozy bed, you will read for an hour all the books that you have downloaded to your e-book reader. Right. Just like this.
If the difference between your lifestyle now and the lifestyle you want to have is too big, the chances of failing are overwhelming, as you barely can maintain the changes for a single week. Nothing personal; you should not think you are the only one who cannot handle this situation.
Routine life makes you feel safe and gives you an illusion of stability. Changing your life completely in a day is simply too stressful for your mind and body. You kind of fighting with your life; it is almost like a real war. But do you really want to be an enemy to yourself?
If you need the result, it is better not to put strict time limits. Do not be too cruel to yourself, let everything go smoothly. Make the changescome naturally, without epic fights.
2. Start small
I honestly believed that doing exercise can easily become a habit if you push yourself to go to a sports club every second day. Then I found that I am very tired after work. I decided, okay, I can do it all by myself without spending time on the way to a sports hall, changing clothes, and looking at those people with bodies-I-will-never-get. I bought a Jillian Michaels’ set of exercises, each workout for about 30 min. But I gave up already after five minutes. After another set of jumping jacks, I felt like I was going to die. And I had no desire to die every evening.
The problem was, I wanted too much from myself. When I came across the idea of starting small, the solution to my problem came by itself. I found 10-minutes HIIT workouts that were concentrated on a certain problem zones. Though it was not as efficient as half-an-hour hard exercising, it gave me an opportunity to get used to sports. Quantity first, quality later.
And it is not only about exercising. Instead of spending an hour on my Dutch (and I never found a whole hour for that), I started doing just short one-page lessons. I downloaded the free Duolingo app and started doing 5-minute exercises. Easy, no stress, and yet you can see the process. You can apply the same idea to basically everything.
3. Focus on small victories and visible progress
The secret about starting small is not to expect big changes at once and enjoy the small victories every day. You should realize that you cannot become an expert in coding in one week, no matter how hard you try and how many hours you spend learning: this kind of things simply does not happen so fast. It requires time and practice.
It is much wiser to divide your task into small pieces and let yourself get a small victory every day. You can even make a list of what you have to do, or circle the pages or chapters in a book when it comes to the reading or learning process.
Think of it as of a brick wall. You need a final result (a wall), but you cannot achieve it without putting the bricks next to one another. If you try to put all the bricks at once, it will be just a pile. You need to take one brick after another and carefully put them together, giving the cement time to get harder and stronger. With every line of bricks, your wall becomes higher. The same goes with all the little victories you get every day: slowly they bring you closer and closer to the final result you are craving for.
4. Focus on the process, not on the result
In most cases, procrastination is the reason we do not achieve our goal. You will find all possible excuses not to start what you are planning to do. I remember that even one page of Dutch lesson sometimes seemed to me impossibly long to complete. I thought about the new words I usually write down in a special notebook, about making my mind focus on the translation (which is sometimes a real heroic deed, especially after a hard working day) and it made me think that I would better do my lesson next time, when my mind will be in a fresher state.
This is exactly how procrastination works. We spend more time to find reasons not to feel guilty for not doing things than we would spend on actually doing them. It is not easy to conquer procrastination, otherwise we all would know several languages already, have a nice trained body and a pack of scientific or fiction books written.
To solve this problem, you should not think of what you will get as the result, focus only on the process. Just give yourself a time limit and say, “No matter how difficult the thing is going to be, I will do what I can within these 5/10/30 minutes.”
If you promised yourself to read a chapter of a book per day, but the next chapter takes 50 pages, there is no need to stick stubbornly to your promises. Do what you can, read for a while and, after some time, the chapter will be finished.
5. Create one habit at a time
It is way too tempting to change your life completely with a bunch of new habits, but the reality usually strikes you back. The real life shows that focusing on too many things at once leads to poor results in all of them. You may start with great enthusiasm, but in a week or two procrastination will take its turn, or it will be too difficult to focus on everything, and you will simply forget to do things.
This problem has pretty much the same explanation as why multitasking does not work—because our brain simply cannot focus on many things at the same time.
Also, different habits take different time to form. You may start doing exercises in the morning voluntarily already after one month, but you will not start speaking a new language fluently after the same period of time.
The best way not to fail is to focus on one habit at a time. If you have decided to switch from drinking coffee to drinking water at work, have patience and wait until you do not have to focus on it, until it becomes a routine for you. Once you are done with it, you can start focusing on another thing, for instance, answering all your emails before checking your Facebook (you know how much time it takes).
It is well known, that usually it takes 21 days to build a habit, but the reality shows that it is far from the truth. One study shows that there is simply no specific amount of time for forming a habit, everything is very individual (time required to form a new habit may vary from 18 to 254 days). So, as I mentioned it before, do not focus on the result, just do your thing, and the habit will come when it is time for it. One day, you wake up and start following your habit automatically without even paying attention to it. And that would be it.
6. Create triggers
It is much easier to follow your new habits if you do not give yourself a chance to find an excuse. It would be wiser to put the book you want to read next to your bed, so you do not need to take it off the shelf every time. If you do your language or coding lesson, for instance, using a mobile app, you may do it while you are drinking the morning coffee. So, every time you go to the kitchen in the morning, take your smartphone with you, or even put an alarm to remind you to do it.
A trigger will help you to remember to follow your plan. If you decided to go for a run every morning, it is easier to stick to this resolution if you put on your exercise cloths on right after the shower, so that there will be no excuses to postpone the running. You can put the cloths in the bathroom in advance, so the moment you see it, you know it is time for going out and having some exercises.
This way of creating new habits can become a sort of a hobby for you. At least, this is exactly what happened to me. For 2016, I have a plan to change my eating habits, learn to play guitar and do several more useful things I postponed during the previous years. It excites me that I do not have to work hard. Just by doing the small things every day, I achieve so much. I wish I knew it earlier.
